Hey Joe

New Jersey, U.S. Dean Barry, an American veteran who got involved with a young woman from Naples during the Second World War, returns to Italy in the early 1970s to meet his son in the same city. Dean would like to make it up to him for being out of his life for twenty-five years, but his son is a man now: he grew up with the mob, was adopted by a mob boss and smuggler, and has no interest at all in his American father.

COMMENTARY
This solid melodrama with a strong social focus flows smoothly, ever aware of the story’s pathos and its evocative settings, and maintaining a perfect balance between its two main characters, the father and his son.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
Hey Joe is a film about the consequences of war and the relationship between the United States and Italy, as seen through a father-and-son story. The film is set in 1971: the NATO base in Naples means there are many Americans in the city, but the local economy thrives on smuggling and prostitution. The consumer society is dawning, and the U.S., after freeing Europe, is teaching it the importance of merchandise and the appetite for impossible-to-come-by items that come from across the Atlantic Ocean. Dean Barry is a man who has lost his way, a victim of war and solitude. He tries to retrieve his humanity by building a relationship with his son.